Judge approves $143M natural gas explosions settlement

Advocates: Transgender woman sexually assaulted at ICE site

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts judge approved a $143 million class action settlement Thursday for residents and business owners affected by natural gas explosions in Massachusetts in 2018.

The settlement’s approval comes days after Colum

PHOENIX ( AP) — A transgender woman seeking asylum should be released after she was sexually assaulted and harassed while being detained in an Arizona immigration facility with men for nine months, advocates said Thursday.

Alejandra Alor Reyes, who is from Mexico, is suffering from PTSD and should be released on humanitarian grounds while she awaits an appeal in her asylum case, according to several groups, including ACLU of Arizona, Trans Queer Pueblo and Detention Watch Network.

They say her case is a further indication that transgender immigrants face unsafe conditions and that none are being held with members of the gender they identify with.

Reyes, 24, says she fled bia Gas of Massachusetts pleaded guilty to causing the explosions that killed one person, injured dozens of others, and damaged or destroyed more than 100 buildings.

“This community suffered greatly in the wake of the explosions, and the

Mexico after suffering abuse and discrimination because she is transgender. Shortly before presenting herself at an official border crossing to seek asylum, Reyes was kidnapped and beaten, and part of her thumb was cut off, advocates said.

She asked for asylum in June and has been in custody since then, serving two stints— one for a month— in solitary confinement, according to the advocacy groups.

Supporters are pleading with ICE to release her from custody while she appeals her asylum denial. They say the agency has violated its own polices by placing Reyes in solitary for longer than it should.

“ICE continues to fail to address her needs and further harms her by keeping her in custody,” said Yvette compensation that residents and businesses will receive from this settlement will go a long way in healing the Merrimack Valley,” the lawyers leading the class action suit said in a statement.

Columbia Gas is also on the hook for a $53 million

Borja, an attorney with the ACLU of Arizona.

The Associated Press doesn’t typically name people who say they are sex abuse victims, but Reyes and her advocates have gone public with her claims, hoping to bring attention to her case.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had offered to transfer Reyes to housing for transgender detainees in August but she declined.

“ICE is committed to upholding an immigration detention system that prioritizes the health, safety, and welfare of all of those in its care and custody, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) individuals,” spokeswoman Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe wrote. criminal fine — the largest ever imposed for breaking a federal pipeline safety law. Its parent company will sell off the Massachusetts operation. Rival utility Eversource has said it plans to acquire the assets.

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded last year that Columbia Gas poorly planned a routine pipeline replacement project in Lawrence, causing natural gas overpressurization that led to the explosions and fires in homes and businesses on Sept. 13, 2018.

The board also determined that the utility inadequately responded to the disaster, which resulted in a prolonged recovery effort in which residents and businesses were without natural gas service for heat or hot water, sometimes for months through the winter.